A quick holiday week

This week was all over the place, as the Fourth of July was on a Tuesday, and I started a summer class. Interns did not have to work on Monday, but I did since I did not work last Friday because of the extra long day covering the trial. My Monday was basically wrapping up loose ends from the week.

Wednesday started with the other Greensburg intern and I heading out to Jeannette, a town about 10 minutes from the office. Their EMS service announced that they were closing immediately on Monday, so we went around to some local businesses to talk to community members. It was a great way to get out of my comfort zone and familiarize myself with the community a little more, as I am thinking more about trying to work for the Greensburg Trib post-graduation. Also, it was another instance where we had to deal with trying to get information from sources that will go on the record. Off the record sources, in this case, gave the most insightful information but would not give us their names. It is hard trying to be creative during these instances when all the city officials are not talking, and people who are not city officials have been affiliated in the past. However, it was fun to dig through some tax forms from the service. I think it is neat to see some trends over time and how numbers can sometimes confirm what people are saying, which was that the closure was due to lack of revenue. I then did some miscellaneous things before heading out of our weekly partnership meeting. Today's focus was on hyper-local news coverage and how it works in communities. We also heard about getting a job post-graduation and some of the tests to expect during job interviews. This actually caught me by surprise. It makes sense for jobs to want to test your grammar, AP style and spelling skills, but I have not heard of any other people going through these kinds of tests that have interviewed recently. I am not sure what to take from this, and there is no way to 100% prepare for an interview, but I hope my job search goes well.

On Thursday, I hit the ground running. I was finally able to finish my story about standardized testing scores, as one local superintendent finally picked up the phone. I continued to reach out to the other ones again nearby but did not get an answer again. This story had so much potential and was something I was really interested in, but I am so glad it is finally finished, as it was just the worst time to peruse the story. I also worked on an update to one of the previous day's stories about Beyonce's Renascence Tour being cancelled at Acrisure Stadium; the show was supposed to be on August 3. I reached out to several different people, even the stadiums that had shows rescheduled due to similar reasoning. My day did not stop there, as I started working on a story about car repair costs and insurance rates increasing by reaching out to some local auto repair shops. I then tried to wrap up any loose ends from the previous weeks.

Friday was another remote day. I worked on a quick story about some local gymnasts winning national titles and started working on two assignments, which are about the increase in price of car repairs and our group intern project on 24 hours in Pittsburgh.

Here are my stories from the week:

Puerto Rican rapper Farruko brings show to Pittsburgh's Hispanic Heritage Festival

Meat-free dining available at multiple sites in Pittsburgh

Here is the story intern Anna Mares and I helped with, which was by Renatta Singorini:

'You will have an ambulance': Jeannette leaders scramble in wake of EMS closing